Bulwark Takes - Trump’s Threat to Hurricane Victims Could Cost Republicans BIG (Anderson Clayton & Nikema Williams)

Episode Date: October 24, 2026

The battle for Congress is heating up ahead of the midterms. Tim Miller talks with North Carolina Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton about key House races, rural voters, and gerrymandering. Plus, Sam Stein joins Rep. Nikema Williams in Georgia to discuss voter turnout, Trump's election interference, and what's at stake in November.For a limited time, Tempo is offering 60% off your first box! Go to https:/Tempomeals.com/BULWARKTAKES

Hey, everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor of the bulwark. Now, the midterms are just a little over a week away, and we happen to be on the ground last week in two very critical states. In North Carolina, Tim had a conversation with the chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, Anderson Clayton. And then in Atlanta, Georgia, I chatted with Representative Nakama Williams to discuss election security. She happens to be the congresswoman who represents Fulton County. You know, that's the place where the Trump administration has done a lot of election interference. She had some interesting thoughts about that. Now, as a reminder, we will be doing a members-only election day preview on November 1st.

That's Sunday, the Sunday before elections, starting at 8.30 p.m. It's going to be great. You're going to be able to join a bunch of us from around the country, different reporters, different editors. If you're going to be on, we'll answer your question. So if you want to know what's going on, that's a great place for you to pose a question to one of our experts or our reporters. And then on election day itself, November 3rd, starting at 7 p.m. We will have a live TNL for you guys. And then we're going to continue our election coverage with the rest of the

Bullwark team throughout the night. We're going to have people joining us from different states where they have election watch parties, D.C., people around the country. It's going to be a rolling conversation. You should join us. We're going to digest the results in real time. So now, the only way that you can do this, the only way to stay up to date on our coverage is by becoming a bulwark plus member.

So that means access to all of our newsletters and our reporting. So if you've been thinking about riding with us, you know, now is the time. Now is the time to take that next step. All you have to do is go to theboolwork.com slash join. That's thebullwork.com slash join. You won't regret it. Hey, y'all.

I'm here at Pilot Brewing in North Carolina. You can already tell my twang is coming back in because I'm hanging out with Anderson Clayton. She is the chairwoman of the, of the Democratic Party here in North Carolina. You're 28 and a half years old. I am indeed. But for people who don't know you, like in political circles,

like I've been hearing about you for a minute because you're everywhere. I mean, you know, you're doing a lot of interviews. You're out doing kind of rural, North Carolina stuff. You're picking yourself. Well, why, how about, like, why are you magging the other state party chairs so hard? Shit, I hope I'm not logging.

You can't, no. I got elected in 2023, and I was 25 as the youngest state party chair in the country. And honestly, when you've got one of the oldest presidents in the country's history and you've got the youngest state party chair, you typically do come up and get some attention. Get some attention to them, you know? You're talking about the Twitter DMs.

I feel like on Twitter people have a misperception of what the Democratic face actually is and who the Democratic face actually is and what motivates them. Like, you're out here in the streets, you know? Like, what, outside of the kind of, like, discourse between, like, various people fighting over topics like like what what like who are stereotyped for me like the types of people that are making up the democratic base like what they're riled up about right now i don't necessarily think that you could in north carolina right now stereotype our party because there are so many different types of people that are calling themselves maybe not a democrat this year but they're going to vote for a

democrat this year and i think that we've got to build that back of who actually makes up our party in so many ways but if i'm looking at i'm like black voters in eastern north carolina and our black felt right now who have been disenfranchised by Republicans in Congress. You're looking at Western North Carolina with the fact that you've got Hurricane Helene victims who have not seen the full funding from the federal government that they needed to come back to their communities. When you look at the southeastern part of the United States or the North Carolina in the United States, like you're looking at an area of folks that have been just disenfranchised. And I think that what you need to know about North Carolina is the most racially impartisan gerrymandered

state legislature and congressional races that we've got in the entire country. So I guess Kay Hagan was the last Democratic Senator to get elected here. God rest her soul. How old are you when Kate Higginberg was in? Young. Young. Like nine. Yeah.

Yeah. Young. So it's been forever. A one voting age. Yeah. It's been forever. And it's kind of crazy. Like, when people are asking me, it's kind of been a running gag as I've been going

up to some of the, you know, no king's protest and stuff. They're like, how do you think we're doing the midterners? And I'm like, well, Roy Cooper, I think it's going to win. And they're like, well, obviously. Like, everyone's taking that for granted, kind of. You know, and focusing on these even more. red states, but like, you guys haven't won a race here in 20 years for the Senate and you've run state races. The federal race has been a long time. Like what, like what's your sense?

What's happening? I mean, the National Democratic Party has called us the Great White Whale for such a long time. And I was like, if I were y'all, I wouldn't pull money out of something that I haven't won in 20 years, but that's just me in every way, shape, and form. And so, I mean, we're a 50, 50 state. We have seen it time and time again where polls have been up in October and we have lost elections in November. Well, we have got to do this year is keep our foot the gas and make sure that nobody takes this state for granted, especially the people in North Carolina. And that's, I'm seeing people across the state, the Cooper rally that I was just at, folks talked about it. They were like, we know what North Carolina has been. And we're not going to let

national headwinds or, or the headlines, honestly, be able to dictate how serious we're going to take this election this year. Yeah. Because I know that we've got to do right by the people of the state. Let's talk about some of those house races. You got one of my two favorite candidates in the country. Jamie Ager. Jamie Ager. knew it everybody's not predictable no i mean you or he's just that good he's just that good i was like you meet the guy and you understand why it's everybody's favorite candidate yeah i met jame a go one of these you know happy hour meet and greet things you deal with political people yeah and you know

his staffer somebody is trying to like explain to him who the bulwark podcast was like he was just like who's this boy i like he could not have given a fuck about me which i love which i love um and uh oh let's just tell people about him who don't know him and what What's happening in that right? Jamie Ager is hopefully going to win a red to blue flip this year for NC11, which was one of the areas of the state that was most impacted by Hurricane Helene. Less than 16% of federal funding has been relinquished back to Western North Carolina. And Donald Trump was just in Gastonia a couple weeks ago.

And he said, look, and Michael Wally's not elected at the U.S. Senate, you can better believe that that money's not actually coming back to North Carolina either. And the threat of that right now from a president of the United States, we need real leadership in Congress that's going to go up there and say, oh, fuck yourself, the people in Western North Carolina are going to get the help that they need at the end of the day. And we need someone like Jamie Eager, and we need someone like Roy Cooper, and we need both of our House chambers and our Senate chambers in Congress to be able to work together to do that. Because right now, this president is not taking seriously. And Jamie is somebody, he is a farmer in Western North Carolina, regenerative agriculture is his business.

And so he can tell you, you know, how your beef got to your table where it was brought up and what it was fed when it was growing up in every way. And the opportunity to be able to tell folks that when you've seen farmers, suffer the most right now under this administration. I mean, I know nobody better to go and talk about tariffs and the relief that we need than Jamie Ager. Yeah. When you got in, like, organizing in the rural part of the state was a big part of what you were doing. And, you know, and hopefully this is going to pay off a little bit in Jamie Ager's race.

Like, people got to run through the tape. But I don't know. You know, sometimes I hear from people like progressive intervals are just like, it's not what's trying, you know, to go out there basically because it's just like folks, whether it's because they're in a trunk cult or for religious reasons or because they're news environment as such that they're not like getting true information. Yeah. Like they're not reachable. You've been out trying to reach like what like what are things that work or are that you've seen have you know, you know, how have you seen some positive progress on reaching rural votes? Showing up. I mean, genuinely, I tell me all the time you want to talk to rural voters. I want you to talk to rural Democrats first because those are the folks to stop voting a whole hell long time ago. And we need those folks to start showing up. North Carolina used to lose.

margins on 60, 40 in rural counties, and now we lose them 80, 20, and that 20%, that 40%, right? It adds up. It adds up. And as Democrats that have ancestral Democrats that have decided that they didn't want to turn out to vote anymore because they don't believe they've got a place in this party right now, and that's because they haven't had a Democrat that's represented them for a long period of time. And how do you tell somebody that, hey, I am not a baby killer, I am not a demon, I am not

whatever you are hearing on Fox News and talk radio right now, you show up in their face and you shake their hand and you tell them what you're about. because the fact is Republicans, I think, have done an incredible job, honestly, and I'll give them this, like, talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, like they did their shit, you know, and 40 years of Republicans that have engrossed, right, rural communities in their media ecosystems. I was like, Democrats are trying to make up for, in four years, what Republicans did over 40, and we're about to see whether or not that's going to work in this election cycle, but we have to keep building. And every way, shape, and form, the information silos that people find themselves in are why they're not voting for their best interest.

And I just want our party to keep showing up in areas that I'm like, hey, we may lose the fight this time, but the fight is still worth fighting. That's right. You got to show up in person also just kind of speaking for my people. The internet also works in rural America too. Amen. Right? Like in some ways, it has flattened, you know, the ability to communicate with people. And, like, Democrats can try to reach people, you know, in Red America using these tools too. Yeah. And we do have some billionaires that are making it a little hard at the algorithm, but it's still doable. The thing is, though, in rural communities especially, though, it ain't what you know, it's who you know. you know and I I genuinely do believe that and I just I take this from like data to right the number one trusted source of information right now for people are not it's not

the internet it's their friends and family it's their community if they're around every day because to be honest with you most of the people my age grew up with folks saying hey don't trust what you're seeing online and instead I've got an older population that really believes what they're seeing online now I have a younger population that doesn't trust it at all and they're like no what is what's my best friend going to go do what's the person in my life going to go do and that's where I'm like a party comes in when we can activate person by person and making sure that everybody sees themselves as an organizer and that everybody understands

like you are the influencer. I don't need to listen to Tim Miller to tell me how to vote this year. Maybe I do. Maybe you should. Maybe you should. But I hear you. But you know, like you can listen to your best friend and hopefully your best friend right has heard and is educated on the issues. And we've done our jobs throughout the year to be able to do that. I think it's going to be a really good year for the Democrats. Everybody's got to keep working. All right. But, you know, sometimes in wave years, you win elections and places, like even. further off the map than Jamie Eager's race. Amen.

So I've, a lot of that national, okay, we're going to get to that. A lot of national people are sending money in and only certain races. Because, you know, at the end of the day, Hakeem Jeffries doesn't care that much whether he has a four-seat majority or a 40. Like to have a 40, but he wants to make sure he has a four, you know? As I've been driving viewers to certain races and, like, create the list of, like, stretch races. It seems like you might not have guessed the other North Carolina race that I, that I think.

NC-13. The mayor of Highpoint. Oh, NC6. Come on, Cyril Jefferson. What about that? I like that too. Could he do it? I think so. Cyril Jefferson is a damn good candidate. Yeah. That's why I liked it.

Davy County, honestly, I just, Davy County got out 100-yard signs earlier today, and that's in his district right now. It's a little red rural dot in his district at this moment of time. And they are, I mean, they're out there knocking doors, they're so excited. And Nathan Linville, who works for me, he's from Davy County, and he looks to me and he said, Anderson, I have never seen this type of energy in Davy. I love this. I don't know. I don't know. I think the energy is there.

Run through those other races, you guessed that I was talking about. That's what I was like, oh, CD13, right, with Paul Berenger running against Brad not. Brad not went up on TV the other day. I said, Brad, you that nervous? Oh, spicy up in Wake County, but I was shocked by that. And honestly, that district is drawn like a fist. And so person county where I live is drawn in that 13 congressional district.

And I would love to see Paul Beringer be able to take out Brad not. CD3, though, I think the races that we're really looking at that are flippable. We've got a whole Don Davis and NC1. in the eastern part of the state. Very good focus on that part. But look, you know, it's an R plus five district now. Like they have tried to read Jeremy and him out of that district every time. NC11, NC3, NC 13, NC9. And then also looking at a real workhorse coming up from the rear in that sense with Kimberly Hardy, who's an NCO7 against David Rouser. And honestly, early vote numbers the other day popped out and they said 10 of Republicans in these congressional seats right now are Baltimore

Anderson's state. So what does that mean? What's the best case scenario? I don't know. Like, what's the current House break? There we go. I have a 10 to 4 minority right now in the state house, or not the state house. And my house representatives, I mean. So you're like 7-7, you're feeling real good. 7-7, I'd be rocking with it, you know? Like, 7-7, and it would have been the thing that it would have been a dummymander. Like, no one would have ever expected North Carolina to be able to do that in an election cycle like this.

You mentioned the Supreme Court races here, too? You want to talk about that real quick? I do, because Akeem Jeffries would be Speaker of the House right now if we did not have a Republican State Supreme Court in North Carolina. And if Democrats had done their due diligence down ballot in 2022 and in 2020 in North Carolina, we would have a Democratic state Supreme Court that would have given three more House seats to King Jeffries this year. And the fact is we had a Republican state Supreme Court that came back in in January of 2023 after we lost the state Supreme Court in 2022, along with an important U.S. Senate seat that year. And they re-jerrymandered North Carolina without a court decision being brought before them.

Out of 200 years of court precedent, Republicans did something in a state they had never done before. And they repealed and they went back and they said, we're going to institute and re-institute partisan and racial gerrymandering in North Carolina that took us from that seven and seven equal split that we had in 2022. And in 2024 brought us to the 10 to four minority that we have right now. And we have been on the pathway since I got elected as chair to take back the North Carolina State Supreme Court. It's where the party has put all of our time and energy in focus because I know that to be able to have the other branches of government to have a lever of power in the state we have to have the courts. It has a fair system. We do. And it's insane for it to be 10 to 4 here.

And those going on us been a coin flip, you know, it'd be one thing if it was, you know, what, what, not to do, I'm doing math on the fly, which is hard. Eight six. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, okay. It is hard. Okay. Eight six.

You're like, all right. Maybe you had a bad candidate one year. It's like, it's like, it's crazy. Like, what are you doing? Like, right? Rigging elections. That's what you're doing. No, genuinely.

But Anita Earls, we want a state Supreme Court race in 2024 by 7344 votes at a 5.5 million cast, Justice Allison Riggs. Yeah. We've got a whole Justice Senator Earls this year. And I've got three Republican seats up in 2028 that we can take back our court. And we can do exactly what Republicans did to us in 2023. So the plan is 2028. You take back three Supreme Court seats. We beat the fuck out of J.D. Vance.

Amen. Here in North Carolina. Amen. And win those electoral votes back for the first time since 2008. Come on. Then we're in business. We have a presidential. We got another U.S. Senate election.

North Carolina is one of the most important states in the country. The only state that's got two red to blue Senate flips within it within the next two cycles. Let's go, fire. Amen. Yes. With Thanksgiving coming up, my calendar is getting packed, and cooking dinner during the week is just not happening. Or if it is happening, I'm afraid you can't call it dinner. Tempo has been a lifesaver when I need something quick, that's still a real meal.

Tempo delivers fresh, chef-crafted, dietitian-approved meals right to your door, making it easy to eat well and save time even on your busiest days. The meals are perfectly portioned for lunch or dinner, and they're ready in just two minutes. So instead of settling on a sad desk lunch or grabbing fast food, I can have something generally satisfying without the extra work. I love that there's so much variety too. With over 20 recipes every week made from nutrient-rich ingredients, you can keep things interesting and find meals that fit your timeline. Whether you're looking for an extra protein or more fiber or a calorie-conscious option,

there's something for you. For a limited time, Tempo is offering our listeners 60% off your first box. go to tempo meals.com slash bulwark takes. That's tempamiles.com slash bulwark takes for 60% off. I didn't say 16. I said 60, 6.0% off your first box. Tempomiles.com slash board takes rules and restrictions may apply. Hey there, everybody.

I'm Sam Stein. Managing here to the Bullwark. I'm joining my congresswoman to Camel Williams. Hello, hello, hello. How you do we're staying outside of the Baptist church? In the heart of the fighting fifth. Tell me a little about the fun fifth. So I have a very historic district.

We are standing here outside of historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, Dr. King's Church, the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement, and I represent the district that Congressman John Lewis held for 34 years. So I understand my obligation and the fight that we're in right now, because we've been through it before. Atlanta understands. When you say it's Dr. King's Church, which is Senator Warnock take offense to that because it's now his church, you know?

He knows. He's in Dr. King's a little bit. So he takes pride in that. His church is across the street. Dr. King's church is the historic church. All right, we got two weeks to election day. It's getting busy. Two weeks.

Busy, is it? Yeah, I would say, yeah. I can't tell. I think it's busy. Tell me what you've been up to. We are planned for everything here in Georgia. All of our state legislatures are on the ballot. We have an opportunity to flip our state house.

And we have every constitutional office up for an election. You might have heard. We got a little gubernatorial race on the ballot. Yeah. And U.S. Senate. So we are the one state in the country that has everything on the ballot. 14 congressional seats, I'm on the ballot.

Yeah, well, that happens every two years. Every two years. But you don't got to pop itself up. All right, so one of the big question marks is how black voters respond to what's happened in the past two years, not just redistricting, obviously the Supreme Court decision on Voting Rights Act. Seems like it's generating a lot of back-loss.

Love enthusiasm for African-American voters to go to the polls. Is that what you're saying some? Absolutely. I had a big rally in my district last week. with Keisha Lentz bottoms and the room was packed and the energy was palpable. And black voters are turning out because number one, what you saw in 2020, you can't reverse that course. And so we're continuing to build a momentum cycle

after cycle and we're seeing that now. And black voters, black voters are the reason that we got our first black senator, our first Jewish senator, and black voters are gonna put us across the finish line when we elect the first black woman ever in any state of the state of, the country as governor. Yeah, well, let's see because at the same time, this has been the episode of a lot of, like, shenanigans from the Trump administration, Fulton County, some people

down here. Tulsi was here, uh, lawsuit. She was here peeking around the corner. Yeah, I saw, I saw the photos. Um, what do you make of what's happening? How scared are you that they're going to mess with the vote? So I would be lying to you if I didn't say that I had some fear because they are, they don't play by the rules. And they're willing to do whatever it takes. And they're even if it means stealing 2020 ballot vases and voter rolls to influence the 2026 elections. So we're seeing it in real time. I live and vote in Fulton County. And we understand that we have to have an election that is too big to rig.

So we can't. Like Trump. He said that. He did. Is it changing voting habits? I've noticed that a lot of people are coming. No, even a broken clock can be right twice a day. Is it changing voting habits?

I mean, early vote, who knows what to make of it? But what we've seen are so far, are the Democrats not trust in mail-in ballots as much. They're going up, the passing ballots in person. Because they're like, I don't really trust a ballot going through the UPS that Donald Trump runs. Are you seeing stuff like that? So we're asking a lot of people to just show up in person,

because then you can track that vote. You'll know that it was cast. And if something happens, you have more time to go back and fix it up to election day. Georgia has early voting started on October 13th, and it runs through October 30th. So people in Georgia should go and vote early because you can vote anywhere in your county.

You don't have to worry about polling locations being changed because you're right. Our mail is getting slower and slower. A lot of this is by design. If you look at Project 2025, all of this is by design. They wanted to slow down the postal service. They wanted people to lose confidence in our voting systems. We just had right here in our state,

state of Georgia where the elections chair for the state board of elections wanted the the DOJ to come in and like investigate and say that our voting machines were not valid for this election cycle that just happened last week yeah it is kind of scary because you've had republican government Republican secretary state but to their credit they have stood up to Donald Trump I mean that is the bare minimum don't let you still the election so it's not really a profile and courage I'm not saying that what I'm saying is you could end up in a situation, let's say it's going to happen, where those two people are Republicans who will not stand up to track. You're right. You're right. How does that factor into voter, how voters are behaving,

you know? Well, and I think that is at the forefront of our minds, because we know that we need to show up in this election cycle. And when we look at our slate of candidates up and down the ballot, our candidates aren't perfect, but look at what they're running against. Elections are about a contrast. Yeah, I was more like 2028, right? Like, you're going to have a president. she'll Georgia be a swing state again. What happens in that situation? It's definitely a swing state because everybody in their Utti is coming to Georgia in the cycle to make sure that they show up right now.

All right. Since I brought it up, I'm going to ask the question, 2028. I don't want to get too far high to 226, but I have to. You mentioned John Ossaff. We talked about Raphael Warnock. Everyone's buzzing about them. Well, you know, they would do very well on the top of the ticket. Obviously, you need Keisha Lynch-Bottoms to be the governor

because you can't have a Republican governor appoint a Republican governor. Senator as a replacement, assume Keisha Lance Bottoms does win. You have a preference between Warnock and Alsop? Would you like to see either of the Murm? I want to make sure that we take back the White House for the American people. And so I am going to always be on the side of the people and we're going to have a robust primary. And I am looking forward to the conversation because what we've seen over the last two years,

Americans are hurting. And we were a lot to. And people who voted for Donald Trump were sold a bill of goods. and they are understanding right now that this man lied to them. He's only looking out for himself and his family, enriching himself in his family, while the rest of us are still struggling to get by. They, everything is higher.

Like, even this morning at the barbershop, the haircut cost more for my son, this picture day as well. Yeah, picture day. Does it look good? He looks good. Not too short. He picked his outfit, though, and I was like, I don't know about this. Usually want to get the haircut a few days in advance of picture day,

so that kind of grows in a little bit. No, he needed that fresh line. Okay, yeah, fresh life. I'm just going to know, you're a politician, because I asked you a question about Warnock and Osaf. She changes it right back to how Trump's her in America. That's pretty good. He absolutely is.

Think about what's happening. I'm not saying he's not, but I asked you a question. He turned it on me. You don't have a preference? Warnock and Asov are showing that they can leave this country any day, on their worst day, better than Donald Trump is doing it right now.

That's better. Some more direct. Hey, Congressman, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Thank you, thank you. Good luck on Election Day.